'I'm here for my grandmother'

Granddaughter of Mireille Knoll, who was murdered in Paris last month, joins March of the Living as an IDF officer.

Tzvi Lev, 12/04/18 20:00

Keren Brosh

Yoni Kempinski

In late March, the world was shocked by the grisly murder of 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll.

Knoll had been stabbed 11 times and burned by a neighbor who had turned to radical Islam while in prison. Following Knoll’s funeral, thousands of people took part in a silent march in Paris in her memory.

Knoll's granddaughter, Captain Keren Brosh, was chosen to participate in the annual March of the Living as a response to Knoll's murder. Brosh wore a photo of her grandmother pinned to her uniform throughout the entire event, telling Arutz Sheva that she was proud to represent her grandmother on the event marking Holocaust Remembrance Day.

'I first received this picture in a march they did in her honor in France, where there were more than 30,000 people and lots of politics," said Brosh. "I took the picture with me because today I'm here for her, thanks to her."

Brosh added that she was supposed to be demobilized from the IDF on Thursday but decided to fly to Poland after IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot personally requested that she participate. "I was supposed to be released today and I'm here. Yesterday I received a phone call that the chief of staff and the president wanted me to arrive, and of course, I did," recounted Brosh.

Brosh said that she does not distinguish between the anti-Semitism that appeared in Europe during the Nazi regime and contemporary anti-Semitism. "Anti Semitism is Anti Semitism, it doesn't matter which form it appears in," said Brosh.

Knoll, who escaped deportation to a Nazi death camp when French police rounded up Jews in Paris in 1942, was stabbed 11 times before her apartment was set ablaze by the perpetrators on March 23, police say.

Prosecutors have indicted two defendants in connection with what is being tried as a murder with aggravated circumstances of a hate crime. The pair are also charged with robbery.

One of the suspects in custody, a 29-year-old Muslim man, was a neighbor of Knoll. Prosecutors investigating the murder have confirmed the two suspects in custody targeted her because she was Jewish.

Knoll’s funeral was attended by French President Emmanuel Macron, who said that "this is a crime and a murder of a helpless woman only because of one fact: that she was Jewish."